By a blacklisted construction worker
The Pitchford Inquiry, set up by Theresa May to investigate undercover policing, has been completely absent from the news. While the press and TV bombard us with Brexit and daily trivia, this disgraceful example of state interference in daily life is deliberately kept out of the limelight. It is now known that police resources and personnel have been used extensively to spy on legitimate trade union and political organisations that have no relationship or links whatsoever to crime or terrorism. These undercover police operations have even included long-term personal relationships between police spies and members of the public unaware of the real identity of their ‘partner’. One such example is the case of Mark Jenner, the alias used by an undercover policeman to spy on union activists in the building industry.
This article, by a blacklisted construction worker, reports on a recent meeting on this issue.
It is now 10 years since the scandal of the construction blacklist was exposed. Many workers have left the industry and the compensation paid in the High Court case is no justice. Really, the companies involved have got of very lightly and for them it’s business as usual: the blacklisting of trade union activists continues.
At a recent Blacklist Support Group meeting, the partner of Mark Jenner told her story of her time spent with him. She was romantically involved with Mr Jenner for a number of years, although he had another wife and home somewhere else.
Jenner was an undercover cop who infiltrated the industry and supplied information to the Consulting Agency, which in turn supplied blacklist information to the construction companies. He was told by Met Police to infiltrate the industry and was happy to do it, paid his police salary as normal, as well as what he earned as a fake building worker.
Firstly, he had to become a ‘construction worker’, buying boots, a hard hat, a bag of tools and away he went. This was in the early 90s, when you could get a start on most sites by just turning up and blagging your way on to a site as a bona-fide construction worker. He then joined UCAAT and had the balls to go to branch meetings, rank and file builders meetings and probably stood on a few picket lines with the rest of us.
The whole time he was fooling his partner, apparently going to work on a building site, when really he was reporting to the local police station full all of the information he’d got – information for the government, and for the Consulting Agency. Spying on building workers. Then he was coming home again, telling his partner what a tough time he had pouring concrete all day.
As for his ‘real’ wife, he told her he was working ‘away from home’. He used to see her weekends. Both women were deceived by Mark Jenner for over five years. How can this behaviour be acceptable? Who agreed to it, and who sanctioned it? The Pitchford Inquiry isn’t going to go into all of that.
Eventually Mark Jenner disappeared, leaving both women in the lurch. Where did he go to? Where is he now? Nobody knows. This cannot be tolerated in a civilised society. It is completely disgraceful and unacceptable.
Other building workers have been spied on by the Met Police. A case is being prepared by Unite the union and justice must be done.
The scandal of blacklisting is far from over. Spying on construction workers is all part of a conspiracy by the state against trade union activists which needs to come to an end. To be an active trade union is not a crime.
April 17, 2019
